Orchard Park, NY (WBEN) - The Bills are marching toward a home playoff game, with no fans in Orchard Park to see them in person.
Across the NFL, 14 teams are allowing fans to enter the stadium for games in some capacity with COVID-19 protocols in place. Others have had changing rules that had, or may have fans take part. In stadiums where fans have been allowed, there have been no widely reported instanced of COVID issues.
"There's been no evidence of that," said Athletic Sports Business reporter Dan Kaplan about spread of the virus traced back to football games with fans.
"Many of these stadiums are open air, fans are socially distanced, there is mask enforcement. There's probably no safer location to be in most cases in a given market given lax enforcement of social distancing and mask usage elsewhere."
So what's stopping fans from attending games at Bills Stadium?
In New York State, gyms, beauty parlors, and even tanning salons have sued the state to ease restrictions on their businesses with some success. On Monday a State Supreme Court Justice ruled in favor of ZoomTan's lawsuit to be able to operate, saying in its decision that it is arbitrary to use an economic classification system as the basis for shutting a business down without indicating reasons why the business presents a high risk of spreading the virus.
Kaplan said there's a simple reason NFL teams aren't doing the same, even with evidence allowing some fans wouldn't pose a danger.
"The Bills in particular given their stadium situation, they don't want to be suing the State of New York," Kaplan said. "The NFL and sports leagues in general do not want to be in the business of suing governments that they come to hands out for stadium subsidies."
The Bills play Saturday in Denver, which had allowed some fans but has since stopped, even though in a statement the team said there had been no cases tracked back to their home games.
